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Brilliant news! Lambeth REAL Plus cardholders can now gain entry to Brockwell Lido!

Blimey.

At least that’s what it said on p.74 on the recently published A Really Useful Guide to Services by @lambeth_council:

“In Lambeth there are four leisure centres, a community sports centre, and the Brockwell Lido. All accept the Lambeth REAL Plus card, giving generous discounts at all times.”

It’s complete twaddle of course. You need to take out membership with GLL for indoor swimming, and then a second separate membership with Fusion for the lido.

The infrastructure and freehold may be owned by @lambeth_council, but you have to pay twice for the public service. Plus please overlook the fact that the Lambeth REAL Plus card even uses the image of the lido as the main picture. You won’t gain entry flashing your REAL Plus card around the lido reception.

Having a unified membership scheme, allowing users to access the Lambeth GLL managed indoor pools and the Fusion managed lido, has been an issue that I have campaigned for since Lambeth Council first decided to pimp out leisure facilities to two different contractors.

It’s a question that I tire of asking at GLL user forums (next one 19th November, Clap’ham Leisure Centre) and at the BLU AGM. It seems that the poor Council leisure flunkey tires of answering the question, more than I tire of asking it. So I shall continue to ask it.

Initially I was told it was a “turnstile issue.” The swipe card used by the two separate leisure operators wasn’t compatible.

Ah, I see.

Upon my second time of asking, I was given the reply that the lido comes under Parks management, and not leisure.

Righty ho…

And then finally, at the BLU AGM earlier this month, the Council leisure flunkey confirmed that @lambeth_council couldn’t afford to operate a unified membership scheme; money is coming in from both GLL and Fusion - why pass on the benefits to the Council Tax payers?

That’s what happens when you decide to pimp out a public service to two rival organisations. The profit remains in house (although to be fair, Fusion are rather lovely) and the Council is freed from the day-to-day management of what can be a problematic service to provide.

Am I being victimised? Ha! Not really. The oldies are being ripped off by @lambeth_council as well. Free swimming for the over 60′s in Lambeth pools triumphs the Council’s website. That’s all pools apart from the lido.

I’m tempted to take along p.74 of the recently published A Really Useful Guide to Services by @lambeth_council to the final, final lido swim of the season on Saturday morning and make an arse of myself. But then it’s @lambeth_council that has got the problem (and the profits,) not me. Plus I’ll say it again - Fusion are really rather lovely.

Meanwhile GLL are trying. There’s the Swim London initiative, a scheme that for the same £26 monthly fee I pay to swim in Lambeth indoor pools, I can buy into a membership package that lets me swim in all GLL managed pools across London.

Wonderful! Where do I sign up? And, ah… lookey here. GLL also manage the lovely London Fields Lido up at Hackney. So now we have the truly absurd situation where if I take out membership to swim indoors at Lambeth owned pools, I’m excluded from swimming outdoors at the Lambeth owned lido, but I can swim outdoors at a lido owned by Hackney Council.

Bonkers. I need to take a cold shower. There are plenty of those at Clap’ham right now.

Ah, and so I make it to the lovely #tuttle for the first time since the summer months, and whaddya know - coffee and social media just off The Mall is no more. Sort of…

Friday was the final Tuttle Club at The ICA. As all round Tuttle-r, and rather nice fella @LloydDavis explained: there has been a “monumental admin cock up,” with the bookings for The ICA cafe.

And so Tuttle is temporarily homeless. I think this suits the rather loose structure of the social gathering perfectly. I’ve found Tuttle a space where I can go as and when, speak to whom I want, and with no rigid structure that is often imposed on similar online / offline events. Plus it’s not very often that you get to drink coffee in the same room as @bobbyllew, a recent Tuttle convert.

Smeg!

I spent most of Friday morning having a fascinating chat with @solobasssteve. Steve is a musician who understands that his art is worth far more the sum of simply making music.

He has an intriguing (and possibly plausible) theory that the music industry is just a blip within the epoch of making music. Music has always existed; it’s just been that within the past one hundred years or so that an industry has been created to market this music.

The digital revolution (and make no mistake, it is a revolution) is simply the next phase for musicians to create, collaborate and share their work. The King is Dead, long live the Digital King (although I did take some issue with Steve’s assertion that Rod Stewart was a God for a short period in the ’70s.)

It’s these kind of random chats that Tuttle facilitates. The other option for my half term Friday morning was to get to hack my way around some php code alone at home. After a late night of launching profanities at my Mac, I think man and machine were both in need of a break.

Back to the day job(s) next week. I know precisely where I’ll be at 10:30 on Friday morning - podcasting a school assembly.

As for Tuttle? The collective creative minds within the group will come up with a solution. See you wherever, hopefully during the Christmas holidays.

Time to open up the obb mailbox once again…

Hi obb

My name’s [PR whore], I’ve recently started working at 3mobilebuzz.

3 is beginning improvement works on it’s London network infrastructure as part of a wider program of network improvements nationwide. This is very big news for 3, and we’re extremely excited about the implications for the future of the network.

Not ‘arf as big news as I bet it is for 3 customers, tied down to long term contracts, with their dodgy dongles delivering network speeds that a 27k modem would p*** all over,

As someone who’s working closely with us, and with 3, we really need your help talking about this with your contacts and communities.

Hey guys and gals - I think [PR whore] is talking about you! So yep, here I am, talking with my contacts and community about how utterly crap 3 is as mobile broadband network.

Why? Because we’re at the start of a process that will improve 3’s network; we’re talking significantly bigger, better and faster Mobile Internet by the end of 2010 – and that’s a great story to tell. But more importantly, because 3 realises how important you are in telling that story.

I certainly hope it is a great story to tell. It can’t get any worse than the story I’ve been telling about the 3 network for the past eighteen months. I wouldn’t say I’m important at telling that story, but my 3 is the Tragic Number post consistently comes up high in my monthly archive stats.

We hope that you’ll agree that it’s a very positive move for 3 to be making.

Yes, in the same way that giving up smoking is a positive move to make. If you start from a poor position, the only way is up.

Obviously engineering works bring some disruption along with them. Together with 3 we’re looking to provide as much information on this as possible so that customers don’t get taken by surprise.

Hang on - so it’s one step up and two steps back? Won’t that leave users with the online version of negative equity? I’m currently clocking up a whopping 40kbps on my 3 mobile ‘broadband’ dongle in central London. Is a minus kbps speed possible? You’re taking away my modern interweb!

We’ll be compiling questions for the 3 team, so let us know if there’s any further info you’d like to know.

* Please outline what plans you have to ensure that your network demand can be matched by the supply.

* Why do you market your product as ‘broadband,’ when your network can’t support the recognised industry definition of 500kbps?

* Will any compensation be in place if users still can’t get a decent connection after the engineering disruption?

I’ve experienced nothing but misery with my mobile broadband dodgy dongle. Thankfully I only took out the contract as an on the road back up option. Only a fool would rely on such a poor service as their primary source of connectivity. I gave up on the 3 network as soon as I got my iPhone.

But wait - there was one final kick in the face from our friends at 3. With my contract due to expire at the end of November, I recently had cause to contact the abysmal 3 customer support line, to clarify that no more cash would be fleeced out of my account.

Wise move - my contract would have rolled over, month by month, had I not requested a cancellation. It wasn’t a simple case of thanks, but no thanks, either; I was subjected to a lengthy sales pitch before I was given a guarantee that the contract would expire.

So, Mr PR Whore - I’ve told your great story to my contacts and community, and can only conclude that I’d be better off with two bean tins and a piece of string to communicate, rather than rely upon the crappy 3 network.

Anita has lived in Stockwell for over seventy years. In this interview she shares her memories of living in the area during the War, her schooling in Stockwell, and then later employment working within a local school.

As I struggled with an afternoon without heating as the good man Goran came round for a bit of boiler handy work, I noticed a poor chap struggling to keep warm outside in the SW8 Indian Summer.

Seeing sunbathers sitting on the public land in my little patch of South London is not unknown. But out for the count and only five days away from November?

The poor sod was sleeping on the communal patch of land for most of the afternoon, and from what I could tell, not with the help of any substances either. In a five-minute period, I clocked eighteen people walk on by. My home office overlooks the spot, and so keeping a tally was a brief break away from the world of work.

With my man Goran (‘I have a licence to drill‘) doing his thing with the radiators, I was wearing three layers indoors. Time for a hot drink, time to share and share alike.

I took out a cup of hot chocolate to the Sleeping Man of SW8. I was unsure at first - would he want to be woken up? Would he view my act as an insult? Or was he sky high on some substance, and prone to respond to the Good Samaritan act with a polite punch in the face?

I needn’t have worried; sure, conversation was short, but the healing power of a hot cup of chocolate was the common communication that got a smile from his rake thin facial features as soon I approached.

He seemed slightly embarrassed to have been caught napping during the day. We didn’t exchange many details, although I did find out that he has been sleeping rough in Lambeth since the early summer.

The onset of autumn has made it difficult to keep a low profile. Sleeping during the daytime in the summer months can be passed off as sunbathing. Not so once the clocks have gone back and you’re using a pile of autumn leaves as your pillow.

The Sleeping Man of SW8 tries to live a nocturnal lifestyle around this time of the year. Sleeping rough at night can be highly dangerous, running the risk of random acts of violence from people who have the comfort of a roof over their head. His early hour routine is spent walking the streets of Lambeth, staying alert and trying to avoid trouble.

The main threat though comes from the Police Dispersal Zone (PDZ) recently introduced to the area. Police officers now have the power to disperse people who are causing a nuisance around Stockwell. The Sleeping Man of SW8 doesn’t add extra value to my property price, but being that he’s asleep for most of the day, he’s hardly a nuisance either.

The PDZ seems the wrong response from various agencies. Move along, Sir, but where to? You’re pushing the ‘problem’ around the borough, and not giving the opportunity for an individual to improve their life.

A cup of hot chocolate is hardly going to wake up the Sleeping Man of SW8 from his lifestyle of slumber. At least I didn’t ask him to move on.

Another week, another local Lambeth politician getting his online knickers in a twist all over Twitter. @cllr_robbins’ ill-advised tweet, referring to a colleague as a “scab,” has been deleted for less than a week; next up is @cllrMarkBennett, Lambeth labour councillor for St Reatham South, using Twitter to cut out the cancer of bent and twisted, um, tweets in our borough, with the simple sword of truth and the trusty shield of British fair play. Or something.

Blimey.

The good Labour @cllrMarkBennett was so outraged by the appearance of the pro-market force Adam Crozier appearing on the Andrew Marr programme without *shock* wearing a poppy, that a tweet was despatched from deepest St Reatham, declaring:

Royal Mail’s Adam Crozier is not wearing a poppy on Marr. Bad form.

I was personally more interested in hearing what Crozier had to say about the postal strike, rather than trying to put together a character assassination from some failed critique in symbolism.

@CllrMarkBennett Poppy or no-poppy - Not about “bad form” but personal sentiment. The wearing of a poppy is not a PR move.

People choose to honour the Glorious Dead in their own way. This may, or may not, involve the wearing a poppy. It didn’t take long for the good Councillor to come back with a misguided and failed misinterpretation of my tweet:

@Jason_Cobb How DARE you suggest I think it’s anything to do with PR. [um, I didn’t.] Personal sentiment irrelevant. 8500 people from org he leads died.

@Jason_Cobb And consider the sacrifice of people who died in war to allow you the freedom of ‘personal sentiment’. Or was theirs a PR move?

Twitter is great at many things - context ‘aint one of them. As @cllr_robbins has been finding out this week, the wonderful shiny new frontiers of 2.0 can trip up any in-experienced local politician that thinks a throwaway 140 character message is going to help them get elected next time round.

Of course there’s a danger of falling into the trap of thinking that all of these online missives are actually of any relevance. They’re not. They’re simply the modern interweb manifestation of rotten eggs being thrown at the people who deserve them the most.

“This week we are going to take it nice and easy with a street packed with contemporary (ish) history and lots to see. Frith Street is in the heart of Soho and has some very famous locations, from the lovely seedy Bar Italia to the equally seedy Ronnie Scott’s.

One of my favourite haunts of the past was the Dog and Duck, an imperceptibly small pub. If you think it’s crowded downstairs, try upstairs for a sardine experience.

It a street that’s buzzing no matter what time of day, but certainly comes to life after dark.”